This is difficult to say - what will happen to physical media in 20 years.
Culturally, we seem to live lives where our interactions with experiences - generally speaking - seem to get more and more shallow, they get faster and faster. We grow more and more distracted, lose the ability to truly concentrate. Interactions are mostly incorporated in various mixtures of multitasking. Also, music is mostly seen as commodity, not as art. People even accept terms like "music consumption" without even realizing what they're saying. This all pushes towards death of physical media, which is impractical for this kind of usage.
On the other hand - there's plenty of people who miss physical stuff, who realize that unconcentrated consumption leads to lesser experience and satisfaction, sometimes and for some - even anxiety. These people probably want "slower" experiences. Sitting down and reading a book, taking your time. Sitting down, listening to an album - in its entirety...these are kinds of experiences opposite to the above, which lend themselves to stuff like quality hi-fi in your room, vinyl, printed books etc. There's plenty of research nowadays in field of education which shows we're surely becoming aware of what happens with these quick experiences and the need for slow experience. Will this shift the capitalistic urge for more and more, faster and faster consumption? Also - we're extremely mobile in every way nowadays - this doesn't work well with physical media.
I do think that physical and non-physical media can co-exist beautifully. If I'm in my car or walking in nature - sure, some kind of storage and digital files or streaming would be the choice. When I'm at home and want to seriously listen - hi fi and vinyl is here. If I want to check some quick information - internet and my computer or phone are here. If I want to truly study something - physical books and my armchair are here. Everything has its place.
I do believe that if physical media was completely out of our lives - we'd all start to miss it. I think that something in us is wired in such a way that we want physicality of things. But on the other hand - I also believe that we can forget this and that modes of our lives today can make us forget that. So, in essence - I believe that people should be shown various possibilities and kinds of experiences. It'd be very bad if something vanished from existence. And I also believe that physical media won't go away for a long long time. How popular will it be - that's another question.
I'm not really into collecting films - but it'd be interesting to know how many people actually collect films nowadays (not files on their computers, but on proper media - like DVDs or BluRays). To me it seems that in this area it's much worse for physical media than in music. If so, it'd be interesting to think why that may be so.
Culturally, we seem to live lives where our interactions with experiences - generally speaking - seem to get more and more shallow, they get faster and faster. We grow more and more distracted, lose the ability to truly concentrate. Interactions are mostly incorporated in various mixtures of multitasking. Also, music is mostly seen as commodity, not as art. People even accept terms like "music consumption" without even realizing what they're saying. This all pushes towards death of physical media, which is impractical for this kind of usage.
On the other hand - there's plenty of people who miss physical stuff, who realize that unconcentrated consumption leads to lesser experience and satisfaction, sometimes and for some - even anxiety. These people probably want "slower" experiences. Sitting down and reading a book, taking your time. Sitting down, listening to an album - in its entirety...these are kinds of experiences opposite to the above, which lend themselves to stuff like quality hi-fi in your room, vinyl, printed books etc. There's plenty of research nowadays in field of education which shows we're surely becoming aware of what happens with these quick experiences and the need for slow experience. Will this shift the capitalistic urge for more and more, faster and faster consumption? Also - we're extremely mobile in every way nowadays - this doesn't work well with physical media.
I do think that physical and non-physical media can co-exist beautifully. If I'm in my car or walking in nature - sure, some kind of storage and digital files or streaming would be the choice. When I'm at home and want to seriously listen - hi fi and vinyl is here. If I want to check some quick information - internet and my computer or phone are here. If I want to truly study something - physical books and my armchair are here. Everything has its place.
I do believe that if physical media was completely out of our lives - we'd all start to miss it. I think that something in us is wired in such a way that we want physicality of things. But on the other hand - I also believe that we can forget this and that modes of our lives today can make us forget that. So, in essence - I believe that people should be shown various possibilities and kinds of experiences. It'd be very bad if something vanished from existence. And I also believe that physical media won't go away for a long long time. How popular will it be - that's another question.
I'm not really into collecting films - but it'd be interesting to know how many people actually collect films nowadays (not files on their computers, but on proper media - like DVDs or BluRays). To me it seems that in this area it's much worse for physical media than in music. If so, it'd be interesting to think why that may be so.
